“1,000 missiles are ready to be launched.” That was President Donald Trump’s warning to Iran on July 10, 2026, a day after The Wall Street Journal reported that Israel had told Washington of a fresh Iranian plan to kill him. He said thousands more would follow immediately if the plan went ahead.
The Journal’s July 9 report, based on Israeli intelligence, said Iran planned to assassinate Trump in Ankara, Turkey, where he was attending the NATO summit. Trump had hinted at assassination threats to reporters in Ankara the day before, though he did not confirm a specific plot. Some U.S. officials suggested the Israeli report may have been meant to influence whether he stepped up action against Iran.
Trump played down the idea that anything was new. He told the New York Post on July 10 that he had been on Iran’s list for a long time. “I’ve been on their target list for quite a while,” he said. “The only difference is, I’ve issued the command: if anything occurs, we will strike them with bombings on a scale they have never experienced.”
The backdrop
Iran had openly vowed to kill Trump after the 2020 U.S. drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, a top general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. In 2024, Manhattan prosecutors charged Farhad Shakeri with murder-for-hire and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization, in a plot to kill Trump before that year’s election.
The rhetoric hardened again in July. In the weekend before the Journal’s report, mourners at Ali Khamenei’s funeral called for Trump’s death and carried a banner reading “We Will Kill Trump.” A few days later, his son Mojtaba Khamenei said in a televised message that avenging his father was “the demand of the nation” and “must certainly” happen. A France 24 reporter questioned what the Israeli claim meant for the U.S. and why it surfaced when it did.
The plane swap
Trump changed his travel plans in Turkey. Early reports said he flew home on Air Force One rather than the Qatari jet he had arrived in, and The New York Times cited the new plane’s weak security features as the reason.
In August, senior administration officials who asked not to be named gave a different account. After boarding Air Force One, Trump was moved off the plane inside a catering container and taken to a military jet, they said. Staff and journalists who stayed aboard did not know, and served as unwitting decoys. The military plane flew to the United Kingdom, where Trump met up with Air Force One, stepped off in view of reporters and walked to the Qatari plane, which carried him to Washington.
On August 12, Trump confirmed the switch. He said Secret Service and military personnel had told him to do it because of a possible Iranian threat, and that his replacement plane might be at greater risk. “Every major president faces many threats,” he said. “I’m not concerned about anything.” CBS News reported that U.S. intelligence had identified an Iranian plot to hit Air Force One with a surface-to-air missile.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were on the decoy plane. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and aides Natalie Harp, Walt Nauta and Dan Scavino flew with the president.
Criticism from Congress and former officials
Democratic lawmakers, press advocacy groups and former officials criticized the decision to keep the swap from reporters on the decoy aircraft. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said: “It is unacceptable that Congress was kept in the dark and instead learned about this serious threat through press reports.”
Sen. Chris Coons said he understood putting a priority on the president’s security, but called the episode “a despicable incident of disrespect for the press and for members of his own Cabinet.” Former CIA director John Brennan said the White House had an “ethical requirement” to tell the reporters, and that none of the presidents he served would have put staff and the press pool at risk this way.
Colin P. Clark, executive director of the Soufan Center, said extraordinary protective measures, possibly at others’ expense, point to Trump’s vulnerability. He added that even ending the war would not deter Iran from trying to kill him.
